The Search for Phoenix
by jenskott
Summary: Scott is having very weird dreams by the Jean's grave. What may they mean?
1. Part One Dellusions

The Search for Phoenix

Author: Jenskott

Summary: Mirror of 'The Search for Cyclops' series. Scott is having very weird dreams by the Jean's grave. What may they mean?

Notes: I quitted the X-Men comics after the 'E is for Extinction' saga. I've been keeping slightly abreast of current facts, which sound like utter crap to me. The last straw was hearing about the third Jean's 'death' and the 'relationship' between Scott and Emma. The White Queen was a good villain (powerful, smart and ruthless), and a good character in Generation-X, but I hate what Morrison did. This is my try to fix some bad things of the comics.

Rating: PG-13, at least.

Disclaimer: They were created by Stan 'The Man' Lee and Jack 'The King' Kirby. They don't belong to me, but they don't belong to their creators either. A pity, isn't it?

Feedback: To Opinions, reviews and advice will be VERY appreciated. English isn't my first language so I really need someone points me mistakes.

Part One. Delusions-

A frosty, gelid wind blew across the graveyard, rustling tree branches and streaming among the numerous slabs of dull grey marble. In the oldest ones the weather had eroded the stone and nearly erased the name, and the moss and the lichens and the weeds menaced with carpeting the marker.

Still there was one tombstone stood out on the cemetery, lonely amidst a crowd. The ground was fresh and bare, having been removed and exposed to erosion recently. The marble was polished and glossy, and the words chiseled were clearly readable. A name, two dates and one sentence. She Will Arise Again.

Sudden footsteps disturbed the forlorn and gloomy silence enveloped the graves as a shroud. The sod muffled the noise of the shoes, but that faint sound echoed as a thunder in that dead stillness.

The mourner navigated among the slabs with easiness born of experience, and reached the lonely and bleak tomb. His fingers caressed gingerly the rough surface, memorizing each ridge on the rock, and he kneeled next to it. Onto a circular patch of squashed grass. He sat always down there during his visits. It was his spot.

He remained drawn in mute and awkward silence for a long while. Simply feeling air gusts whipping his face. His eyes were firmly trained on the letters carved on the flint.

"I don't know anymore what I'm doing or why." His lips whispered at last. "You asked me -forced me- to return. You begged me live. But it's so hard."

A slight twister flayed his face and body with leaves, twigs and pebbles. The rubbish prickled and scratched its cheeks, but it crashed harmlessly on the hard, silent, inalterable stone. He rubbed his face with a gesture mixed annoy and despair.

"Everybody are always looking at me. I don't think someone trusts whole-heartily on me. They see me with Emma and only... assume. And judge. Hank, Warren, Bobby... neither of them knows how dealing with me. Rachel... just ignores me, or speaks me with an aloof, plain tone I'm sure my counterpart taught her unconsciously. It's funny. Nobody trusts in me, but they still need me."

He didn't understand it. Did they believe he had forgotten her? Like if it was possible.

His forefinger traced wistfully the borders of every letter. Slowly. Pinning a stare of bottomless sorrow and grief on each symbol. "After Apocalypse I was fed-up of the boy-scout act. Sick of pretending being someone I'm not. Sick of the assumptions the team did. And now I've shattered that image at last, I'm not sure of it be a good thing. Ironical, isn't it?"

Sudden shivers rocked his body and he folded his knees and embraced himself tightly. He was feeling progressively colder. "I was deranged, screwed up, but you paid for my troubles. I ran away, and when I'd made up my mind at last, you.... you... were dead before I said you that..."

An unbearable agony weighed on his chest and he buried the head between his knees. Choked, muffled weeps echoed through the desolate graveyard, as his body writhed and quivered, shaken by powerful sobs. "My life has always been controlled by someone's else since the plane crash. Sinister, Jack, even the Professor. The more I fight against it, the more entangled I'm in. Every time I've wanted giving up my responsibility and starting my own life I've ended up returning. Nowadays the Academy is packed with children we have to protect, the teams are broken and demoralized, and each member keeps a feud or grudge with someone. And I'm stuck on leading them. But I've lost my footing." His solid land. His anchor.

Arctic frostbite began to seep in his blood and to freeze his bones. "I'd be able of putting up with it, of grinning and bearing it if you were with me. But you're gone. Gone before we got any chance of making up. When I think of the wasted opportunities, of the lost time... God, I miss you."

Another long silence started. He raised sluggishly his head, gazing at the name written and at the promise etched below it. "Do you remember our honeymoon? When Nate and us traveled across an alien land, being a family? We were so free then, even if we were fleeing all the time, fighting Nur's armies or taming Nathan. We made our own decisions and got our own lives. Now my family is broken. Again."

His hand stroked his face in hopelessness. Yearning for all there had been, mourning for all would never be and ruing all should never have been. His eyes shut in intense suffering. "I miss you." He repeated stubbornly.

His mind began to review the blurry images of a time at once past and future that now existed only in his memory. Pictures of his life with his wife and his son, traveling through the eroded and polluted wastelands of the thirty-eight century. A tough and harsh life, but happy. And now it'd vanished in smoke along with his dreams. It'd been like that since Apocalypse wrecked his soul and ruined his life.

And then the scene shifted abruptly. The conic hut of organic structure had warped in a room. His bedroom when he was a student in the old mansion. There even was furniture shattered the first time the mansion was destroyed.

He stared at his hands. Golden gloves. He palpated his clothes. Dark blue spandex instead of black leather.

He blinked at the person lounging lazily on one chair. Piercing emerald pupils behind a yellow mask gazed amusedly at his bewilderment. Glossy cherry lips split in a wanton, mischievous smirk.

Scott stiffened, narrowed dangerously his eyes and glared at the intruder and her green-and-yellow uniform. She had worn that outfit after the Factor Three downfall. "Who are you?" He hissed with hostility.

Her lips broadened the smile. "Who do you believe?" She chirped challengingly.

He shook his head in angry denial. "What I believe or I want believing are different matters. If you're Emma, or any other telepath, stop it. It wasn't funny then, and it is sick now."

Her roguish grin evolved gradually in a curious, sad glance. "Unless Emma has been rummaging in your brain or you've told her, I don't think she -or someone else for that matter- knows I dye my hair."

He blinked, nonplused. It was right. Jean was natural redhead, but her hair was a bright orange she hated. She dyed her tresses in a darker, duller hue of crimson. But only he could know that.

"Neither I think Frost knows where I get freckles." The woman of painfully familiar face tugged from her gloves and dropped them on the floor. After she yanked her tight green shirt upwards, and unzipped her short yellow skirt, letting it slip along her slender legs. Very soon her undergarments joined the pile of discarded clothes. And when she was naked, showing bare her ravishing beauty, she took slowly her mask off.

Scott gulped. He was going crazy. All his instincts and wits were screaming him that woman was Jean. Her body was perfect. Same stature, same volume, same creamy skin, same blemishes. Even marks and nicks he'd previously forgotten how she had done. But mainly, her eyes. Two sparkling pools of compassion radiating an immeasurable sadness, an aching melancholy as she gazed at him.

She shook her head with grief. "Scott, my best friend. All I've even done is dying on you."

How did she know those words? He'd never repeated them to someone.

"It can't be." He breathed faintly. His voice was a strangled whine. "It isn't possible. You're dead."

"Yes. I get that a lot." She muttered sarcastically. For first time, bitterness and anger colored her words and twisted her countenance. With a dejected headshake she strode towards him, tossing backwards her long mane.

When she was within his arms' reach, he couldn't repress himself longer. He drew her in him and squeezed her lean and athletic frame with a crushing embrace. As he got her in his arms, smelling her musk and feeling the soft stroke of stray red locks on his cheek, he began to moan.

As he grieved, the woman stroked soothingly his taut back. Steadily his sobs subsided and he stepped backwards, regarding her entire self. "H-how? Why?"

Her gloomy stare shifted in a bittersweet smile. "The how is irrelevant. As for your second question... let's say the White Queen isn't the only capable of playing that game."

"Jean, I-"

Her hand cupped his stubby chin firmly. "Talk later. Now kiss me, idiot!"

Such flaring temper might only belong to one person. Emma was terrible when she was furious, but her ire frightened him only. On the other hand, when Jean was incensed, her dreadful and revengeful choler frightened him and drew him like a moth dazzled by a flame.

Their lips touched. A brief brush grew in an intense merge. He relished on the flavor, on the taste, on the soft texture of that mouth he knew so well.

Often his brain told him one thing and his heart another. When he was with Emma, one part of him wanted the releasing but other yelled him that was wrong. But this felt right. Absolutely right.

His clever hands roamed up and down her body as she stripped him from his outfit.

And he believed. With no doubts, no questions, no regrets. Because he needed believing.

A long while later, when the blistering desire and the sheer need drowning him had been quenched, he lay over the bed, utterly drained and exhausted. Worn off the lust had driven him, he rested lazily atop Jean, letting his body cooled down. They were whiling away in blissful relax, with their limbs entangled with each other, enjoying with the mere touch and the presence of the loved one.

The Scott's lips were kissing and nipping eagerly Jean's collarbone, drawing a purple trail went from the shoulder to the jowl. "Christ, Jean" He breathed "I love you. Now and forever. My heart belongs you."

Part of he felt so hypocrite saying that... But no. It was true. Regardless the foolish mistakes he had committed, his heart was hers now and forever. He had never stopping love her. He couldn't.

He held her and squeezed her with excruciating strength born of panic. He was scared of she pushed him away, or rubbed on his face his betrayal, burning him with her hatred and rancor.

Instead of that she just stroked his cheek, giving him a sorrow, inquiring gaze. "Then, why?"

He shuddered. How the hell could he explain his actions without looking he was giving petty excuses to placate her? "I was confused. I didn't know who or what I was. I was scared from the awful shit in my head, and I didn't want anybody saw it. For that I pushed you away. However, when I needed help, or advice, or closure, you pushed me away. You'd turned as cold with me as I with you. I was afraid of the things had changed and you didn't love me anymore. I didn't know what doing. Emma seemed wishing aiding me, so that I turned to her for advice..."

"And you allowed she messed with your head, albeit had little job left to do." Jean nodded. "I'm angry and upset, but... I'm as guilty as you are. Perhaps if I had been more understanding and less demanding, if I hadn't lashed out at you the few times you sought me, if I had told you 'I love you' more often, if I hadn't used the job to run away from you..." She trailed off. "But we fled from each other instead confronting and fixing the trouble, permitted our bond strained, used other parties' feelings to seek solace... and now we're screwed up."

He nodded mutely, unable of rebuking it. "But now you're here... may you answer me a question?"

She peered at him. Scott rubbed his eyelids on her cheek. "Am I going crazy? Or are you really here?"

"Neither in fact" But before she was able to explain her somber face blanched, fully drained of color, and her eyes widened showing intense dread. "I've to go now." She mused with a panicked voice.

Scott choked, aghast. "No, please! At least tell me-"

"I'm sorry, Scott. But she's coming now. If I stay longer, she'll find me and lock me down. See you later!"

With those frightened, queasy words, an incandescent orange fire blazed in his mind. After a blinding, hot-glowing brightness, the mindscape turned jet-black.

Scott snapped awake as his body lurched onwards. He panted slowly with a labored breath, trying to regain his bearings. The glowing solar disc was sinking in the skyline, dying as the dusk was born and its bright light bathed the Earth. The sky was a flare streaked of red, pink, orange and amber slowly turned a rainbow of dark blues, purples and indigos. Dots of stars glittered on the celestial dome.

He'd stood in that exact posture for hours straight. He winced, feeling his muscles sore and numb. With each motion his joints creaked slightly, forcing him to repress pangs of hurt.

Swiftly he checked his pants. A mess, of course. With a grimace of self-loathing, he stood up and strolled towards the mansion. Maybe someone had got worried about him, and wondered where he was.

However a question lingered on his mind. What the hell was that? A warning of rampaging senility and mental illness? An erotic fantasy? Or it was anything else?

The idea of Jean dyeing her hair comes from some fics of Minisinoo, an excellent writer with highly recommendable tales. It seemed a funny detail to me.

To be continued...


	2. Par Two Discussions

The Search for Phoenix

Author: Jenskott Summary: Mirror of 'The Search for Cyclops' series. Scott is having very weird dreams by the Jean's grave. What may they mean?  
Notes: Is there someone interested in anywhere? Please, I need reviews! Is so hard telling whether it's good or sucks?  
Rating: PG-13, at least.  
Disclaimer: They were created by Stan 'The Man' Lee and Jack 'The King' Kirby. They don't belong to me, but they don't belong to their creators either.  
Feedback: To Opinions, reviews and advice will be VERY appreciated. English isn't my first language so I really need someone points me mistakes.

Part Two. Discussions-

A slight sway on the bed stirred Emma Frost in wakefulness at three o'clock in the morning. Her blond eyelashes fluttered weakly as she tried focusing her vision.

Through blurred and tired eyes she outlined the silhouette of Scott dressing. The spot on the bed next to her was empty and warmless. And the pillow damp, as always. She didn't ask ever why there were tears drenching the linen.

She was more concerned with Scott, who was right now pulling up his pants with enraged frenzy. His emotions were a bizarre puzzle unsettled her: tiredness, hopelessness, fury, spite, anxiety. He was very fatigued but sleep was a luxury denied to him. He was nervous, relentless.

"Scott, where are you going?" She yawned, actually anticipating his answer.

"I'm sorry, Emma. I can't sleep. I'll be practicing in the Danger Room." He voiced hastily. She didn't expect anything else. Since Jean's death he was forlorn, gloomy. He'd surrounded his heart with a fortress and didn't let anyone into. But the last week he'd been more erratic than usual. Edgier, angrier. He exhausted himself, but he wouldn't rest or sleep. Something was eating him, but he wouldn't share. She imagined the reason.

As she watched him rushing towards the exit, driven by ruthless inner demons, her gaze radiated a sincere concern many people considered impossible on her. But when he shut the door with a fierce slam, that look mutated in an affronted and venomous glare.

"Figures you. After all I've done for him, he keeps in love with a buried corpse." She spat. And flooded with bitter, jealous scorn, Emma tucked herself up underneath the covers, knowing Scott wouldn't be back till the dawn.

Half past three in the morning. Rachel Summers -or Grey- sauntered along the murky hallways of the basement, holding a steaming mug on one hand.

Coffee. The juice of the gods.

She didn't use to work out in those unholy hours, but she was afraid of sleeping and dreaming again. The nightmares wouldn't let her alone. And she didn't intend troubling Kitty, burdening her with her fears.

Besides, that early training guaranteed she'd not run into anybody. Nobody would be using the Danger Room in the middle of the night, right?

Quietly she entered in the control booth, ready to start one of her favorite programs, when she noticed with surprise there already was someone running a program. Curiosity and a bad hunch prodding her, she pressed a button to raise the blast shield. While the barrier retracted, she took a sip of her strong and thick brew.

Rachel spat a spray of black liquid over the controls when she saw who was using the Danger Room. Amidst stuttering coughs she wondered why she was bumping into him after her great job in avoiding him during weeks. She was tempted of fleeing, but hers instincts shoved her to stay and watch.

Her father's alternate version was facing Magneto. The Master of the Magnetism was hovering ominously, enveloped in a shimmering sphere of sparkling electricity. His scarlet cloak flapped as bat's wings, and silver-blue sparks crackled along its folds. A malevolent grin warped his face.

Apparently he'd just said something mocking and injuring and obnoxious, because Scott unleashed a potent red blast after yelling an enraged "SHUT UP!"

Magneto readied to deflect it with a bored wave of his gloved hand, but the beam went straight past him, ricocheted off the walls several times and finally hit his head's rear. Magneto tottered onward before glaring at Cyclops.

And then he realized a tiny beam was piercing his chest, right through his heart. He collapsed over the ground instantly, puking a gurgle of blood.

Scott strode at him and stomped his head. Several times. With a fierce, brutal rage twisting his face.

An invisible, sudden shockwave struck him, and he was mercilessly smashed on a wall. Repressing forcefully a howl, he glared at his attacker with a burning, leering contempt. Bastion.

The Nimrod/Master Mold hybrid stretched his arm as approached slowly. His fingertips pulsated with a weird glow. "All of you are only filthy creatures, natural aberrations is my duty and destine exterminate. I'll annihilate the vermin like you, and you shan't be able to stop me. You never were."

Glittering light glowed on the thin lens of quartz, and Scott shot a beam at the ceiling. Large boulders of stone and steel fell down, burying Bastion. Scott lunged swiftly at him, grasped an iron bar and smashed brutally his skull with it. An unceasing rain of blows pounded the robot, and very soon the layer of phony humanity had been stripped to show the machinery underneath the disguise. A wrecked framework of metal plates, wires and circuitry, sizzling with sparks and crackling with bolts.

Scott panted raggedly, laboriously. His fingers wiped hot sweat off his chin, and he stared down on the sentinel with infinite spite. "Guess what, son of bitch? I can."

A sharp, searing pain stabbed his backside brusquely and he toppled onwards, kneeling on the floor. The energy lance imbedded in his back exploded in forks of amber lightning and faded.

Rachel, who had contemplated with appalled horror the brutal beating, sucked air and stifled the cry her throat menaced with letting out. Acab. Standing behind Scott, brandishing another harpoon.

The evil cyborg and breeder of Hounds guffawed cruelly. "You can what? Save them? Pathetic scum, you can't save yourself from me, you couldn't even save your family. I assured your pretty child knew it. And neither your counterpart nor you could stop me."

With a last gloating laughter he hurled his jagged spear towards Cyclops's head. Scott quickly rolled sideways, dodging the harpoon, spun around and shot a beam. Without halting the energy flow, he rotated his head laterally, severing Acab's forearms with the blast.

The red-bearded mutant hunter howled with pain. As his screams tore the air a looming shadow slid over him. Scott was in front of him, gripping tightly his own harpoon with crushing strength.

"This is what you deserve for raping my daughter, filthy bastard." With an enraged yell, Scott pinned the lance between cyborg's eyes and sliced downwards. Split in two halves, his gruesome shape crashed on the floor. A murky brown puddle spread beneath his body. Scott couldn't tell if it was blood or oil.

A harsh fist grabbed roughly his jacket's collar and flung him across the room. Scott landed facedown and let out a moan. He could bear the pain, but the stab wound burnt. His body rolled over laboriously.

The mocking, unsettling Sinister's grin greeted him. "Stupid brat. Won't you learn ever your proper place? You family, yourself, are nothing but toys to me. Interesting toys, worthy of study, but only that. I'll use you as it pleases me, and after you accomplish your purpose, I'll discard you."

Scott felt his chest rising and lowering unsteadily. He remained still breathless. "Do you want studying my power, gothic freak?" He puffed. "Look at it closely!"

Clenching his jaws and closing his fists he fired a blast of destructive energy, sweeping to Sinister with it. Essex felt the tingle of his molecules flowing as the water and smirked, knowing the beam wasn't more harmful to him than spring rain. However Scott blasted his neck as his molecules remained dispersed. The strain was excessive to his shape-shifter ability and the energy pulverized the particles. With a screeching noise Sinister's throat exploded and his metallic head crashed on the ground and rolled across the tiles. A feature of stark, raw shock was frozen on the face.

Scott dissolved it with a beam and with another destroyed the hideous body. Once the menace disappeared, his knees gave out and he slid down to the floor. He was exhausted, badly wounded, depleted, unable to even stand upright.

A malignant shadow clouded the room. Unsteadily, among rough and faltering gasps, he lifted his head up. An eighteen-feet-tall monster towered over him. Bottomless shadows masked its face, and only two narrow, golden eyes were visible on it. A heavy, thick crimson-and-violet armor protected its massive body, gleaming malevolently with the artificial light. Razor-sharp claws clicked with anticipation. An aura of immense, tangible power surrounded him. Onslaught.

"Ever the loyal, tireless hero. Ever the bold and intrepid knight who battles fearlessly by a dream, fighting and struggling as long as he's alive." The psionic being sneered mockingly. "Pathetic, wretched mess! You're a slave protecting people who hate you, fighting alongside people who spite you and longing for a fantasy! Look at the true face of your mentor! I knew Xavier was a deluded fool didn't dare to face the reality! I knew which was the truth and I entertained my own worldviews; but unlike him, I was willing achieve them!"

A quake stirred the atmosphere as Onslaught began to gather energy and build up power. Its body flashed with unholy brightness, and swirling tongues of azure fire coalesced around his mass. A hissing wind, charged with electricity, arose and blew with strength of hurricane.

Cyclops stood up laboriously and faced the beast. His legs writhed and his body was riddled with bruises and lumps, but he glared at the monster, undaunted and unafraid. "Wrong! Everybody -the Professor, Logan, Warren, Jean, myself- have a dark side! It is in us, but it isn't us! And I'm going to take you apart, overgrown worm with attitude! No by the dream, but by myself!"

Onslaught smirked smugly and opened a claw, unleashing idly a tiny force blast capable of bringing down a skyscraper. Scott sidestepped and retaliated with a beam. It drilled a hole in the armor, but nothing more. Onslaught laughed and fired other discharge, but Scott leapt sideways, darted towards him and launched other blast. A larger chunk of armor was torn.

The battle went on, with Scott avoiding Onslaught's attacks and replying with his power. Gradually Onslaught lost pieces of armor, until a final blast shattered the helmet in thousand shards. The psionic entity screamed in horror as it dissolved in strands of energy. The armor wasn't only a protection, but also a shell to store its energy. Gone the caparacce, the power was being released. And since Onslaught was a being made of sheer energy, he was fading to nothingness.

Scott rested his back on a wall and slid down to the floor. Panting heavily. He wished the true Onslaught had been so easy to defeat with such simple stratagem, like that pale copy, that holographic construct.

"An excellent fight, Cyclops. But you have aroused my curiosity. Tell me, which is your dark side? And what emotion are you feeling, gazing at its face?"

The voice was an electric jolt shook Scott off his reverie. With an inhuman snarl he sprang on his feet immediately. Simmering rage flashed blindly on his visor. Apocalypse. Standing in front of him, staring down at him smugly. His wide arms were crossed in a relaxed, scornful posture.

"I'm going to kill you!" Scott yelled and bolted at him. Nur swatted him with a casual, swift sweep of his fist. Scott fell down, and Nur transformed his left arm in a giant hammer. The mace descended, pummeling Scott brutally.

A sickening crunch and an aching moan sounded, eliciting insane laughter from Nur. "Pitiable, despicable microbe! Your diligent fight by that preposterous fantasy brought about only your downfall! At the end you couldn't fulfill your goal, help your partners, save the world or protect your kin! Your faith, your courage was useless! Nothing can survive the Apocalypse, imbecile!"

His arm shifted again, transforming now in a massive pincer. He stretched out -literally- his limb, grabbed Scott's neck and hauled him to inches from his face. Nur blew contemptuously on his battered, bloodied visage.

"What do you feel knowing your entire life is a failure? What you weren't anything but a puppet ever?" Apocalypse mouthed snidely. Scott remained quiet, deadly quiet. "Haven't you got anything else to add?"

Of sudden Scott Summers smirked. "Yes. We can end this with a bullet or a slingshot."

The non sequitur puzzled Nur. Then he realized Cyclops was clutching tightly an object in his fist. Abruptly Scott shot a beam point-blank on his face. Ruby energy crashed on his rigid grey face and shredded the mask. Then Cyclops raised his arm and stabbed his old and withered face with a jagged shard of sharp glass. Apocalypse squealed in excruciating pain and relinquished his hold. Scott landed on the floor and released his last supplies of strength in a giant beam of the purest red.

Potent energy washed over Apocalypse in waves, shattering his thick alien armor as an eggshell, ripping chunks of flesh and crushing his bones as toothpicks. The overwhelming blast struck him down, and he fell down roughly. A booming quake exploded, and the chamber trembled with its ripples.

Scott lunged at his sprawled frame, and stricken for a frenzied and unquenchable rage churned in him as lava, he pried the shard off the gruesome face and stabbed it over and over, rendering his visage a bloody, messed pulp. Then he tossed aside his weapon and his fists started to pound savagely his face.

Meanwhile Rachel remained in the control booth, frozen in shock. Her unblinking green eyes contemplated the scene, widened in an expression of bleak, revolting horror. She hadn't believed Cyclops could be so... wild. Berserk. Bloodthirsty. During that ordeal he'd behaved more ferociously than Wolverine, attacking and slaying his enemies with ruthless competence. He was usually so controlled and quiet. What might have him driven beyond the edge?

Right now he was hitting Nur with an expression suggested he'd gladly cut his belly and rip off his innards with his bare hands. "Fucking scum! Piece of filthy shit! Son of bitch! You'll pay for what you've done everyone and me! Everybody has suffered by your fault! My wife, my children, my friends, me! You've done this! You've wrecked my life and turned it in a hell! I'll kill you!"

Then, when he was about of connecting another hysterical blow, Scott halted. Nur was sporting other face. Bluish, bald, with a single glowing red eye.

"You're so naive. You'll never get free from me. You can't kill me. I'm alive in you even now. Corrupting you, polluting you, sullying you. Taking my revenge. You ruined centuries of plans in a stroke, and for that you'll taste my wrath. You whole family shall pay for your meddling. You saved the world from me, but nobody will save you from me. You'll be my slave, my puppet, my toy until you die."

"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!" Scott straightened and released a barrage of beams obliterated the external. Next he stomped on the ashes. "You've broken me, bastard. But you're dead now, and you won't return."

"You're correct. He ruined your life. But you, Scott, let him."

A started shiver coursed his body, and Scott spun around to face the last droid of the program. Clad in red and golden and floating on a sea of liquid flames. Her mesmerizing face was lit up by the blazes, but her expression was glum, twisted, baleful. Her long cascade of red hair fluttered behind her. Dark Phoenix.

The splitting Jean's image snatched his body with a giant claw of red flames and slammed him on a wall. Scott didn't try avoiding it. Tongues of molten fire coiled around his body, wrapping him tightly, suffocating him with the heat. He didn't struggle against the flares licked and singed his skin.

"NOW YOU'LL BURN!" Jean shouted with an enraged raptor shriek. Blistering flames blossomed from her fingertips and streamed towards Scott. He screamed, but he kept motionless. His eyes gazed numbly, sadly at Jean while she strode towards him, numbering each one of his sins with a booming, accusing voice. The entire expanse of the room was flooded with crackling, fiery flares.

At last she stood in front him, seizing him firmly as she poured charring blazes on his body. He kept offering her that regretful, tormenting, mute stare.

"Have you anything to say?" Her god-like voice boomed. He shook his head. "Fine. Receive your punishment then."

"Shall we be together?" He queried. A faint beam of hope pierced his inward darkness.

She nodded. He arched back his head and shut his eyes, as a sacrifice. Her soft body embraced him. Blinding, hot-melting glow filled her self and enfolded both as a cocoon. Or a shroud.

"Computer, cancel program!" Rachel shouted. The barren scenery froze at once. Inside the Danger Room, Scott dropped on the ground, no longer trapped in a network of telekinetic fire.

"Who is up there?" He shouted, divided between indignation and dread. The thought of someone intruding in his privacy was galling, but the idea of someone witnessing his actions troubled him.

Rachel flung open the gate with an impatient kick, and her glare drilled him. Her blue eyes flashed with boiling anger pleading being unleashed. Nowadays she avoided him or ignored when she could, but this wasn't an accident she might overlook and pretend not having seen. She was going to give him a piece of her mind.

As she came closer to him, stepping among the metallic corpses and the debris, Rachel took guilty satisfaction in seeing him cringing. He seemed mollified and hesitant rather angry. Fine, she pondered. Though she'd likewise be pleased if he was outraged. Part of her ached for a good venting fight.

"What the fuck do you think you were doing?" She hissed.

He shrugged noncommittally. His visor masked perfectly his expression. "What seems it like? Training in the Danger Room."

"No. It seemed more like committing suicide via Danger Room to me." She snarled.

Scott observed her sternly folded arms and her grim, scathing eyes. She was challenging him. "Perhaps I did. So what?"

Rachel was about of retorting sourly, but she stopped. His voice was harsh, but she was feeling him flinching. Retreating. She sensed a maelstrom of conflictive emotions lying dormant underneath the superficial layer of fury: anguish, hurt, despair, pain, loneliness, heartache, grief, suffering, remorse, sorrow, self-loath, frustration, misery. She added up that factor to his earlier actions.

"You think really your life is so hollow." She stated neutrally. With a hint of bare sadness.

"Life? What life?" Scott replied rebelliously. He stubbed accidentally his toe on a tough and round bump. His eyes drifted downwards. Acab's harpoon. What ironic.

He bent and picked the weapon from the floor. With a brusque and fluid motion, he hurled the spear towards the wall. The serrated-edged blade pierced the steel like a knife slicing butter.

Life? He had no life. He was a mindless robot, always manipulated to combat according someone else's wishes. Just like the androids and holograms the Danger Room crafted when he made up the program. His life was an eternal war where his loved ones perished whereas his foes arose screaming from the grave to defy him in an endless battle. He was forced to carry out the dream, lead the X-Men and run the school, and he had absolutely no choice on the matter. He remembered a time where he had taken his own decisions, led his own life, tried being happy. But it was gone.

That thing named life was funny. And bitchy. One day he was deeply in love with the more perfect and prettiest creature on the Creation. Then he shared his mind during one year with a monster shredded, sliced, flayed, bled and bemired his brain with sticky slime. Tattered and bedraggled, unable of understanding what was happening him or how coping with it, he turned for advice to one woman who seemed friendly and comprehensive. But she dragged him in something he never imagined he'd be capable of and caused only regrets. And he couldn't make the things right.

Pain started to throb again into his bleeding chest, and grief constricted it. Blame was again biting his fangs in him before swallowing him, but he couldn't wallow freely down here. Not in front of her. He needed fleeing, mourning privately.

He limped two steps before his legs tripped and his powerless body crashed on the floor. It was useless. He was too wounded. The fight had devoured his energies. Sheer stubbornness and willpower wouldn't make up for weakness and exhaustion this time.

Rachel kneeled beside him and flipped him over. Scott was lying face up now, breathing faintly without moving his broken, damaged body, and gazing at blue eyes. For first time since her return, his daughter was looking at him with mercy and care, instead of artificial aloofness or resentment.

Behind his visor his eyes broke the contact. Looking at that face, so similar to her wife when she was young and hopeful, brought up painful memories.

She kept staring mutely at his face. Her fingers traced the purplish-black rings below his eyes, so wide the visor didn't conceal them. "If you're really sorry, why do you insist on sleeping with Emma?" She questioned. No judgmental for once, just... intrigued.

He tightened his lips in a clenched line. Stern, unyielding. "I'm not sorry for what happened AFTER Jean died. I... only returned and aided to rebuild the mansion why she begged me."

"She... begged you?" The redhead telepath gasped. Aghast, bewildered. And also curious.

He nodded. "Yes. I wasn't coming back. Apocalypse, the fights, the blood, the internal conflicts, the affair, her death... All of it was too much. But then she sent me a message one hundred fifty years from now to tell me that choice would provoke the customary hellish future, and she wished I saved the world. And I lived. For that I'm with Emma now."

Scott paused a second. His stare drifted again at the young girl. "Live. What joke. Whether I've learnt something during these years is moving on is an idiocy. When I was in the orphanage I thought nobody wanted taking me because I was a screwed, brain-damaged freak, but I know now the real reason. I'm a jinx hurts or gets killed the people he loves."

Rachel stiffened. God, he was so badly screwed up? And why nobody had helped him so far? "You can't seriously believe that, Scott." She breathed.

Silence. "Come on, you aren't a jinx. Empirical evidence hints it's a family curse." She joked. But her laughter was a mirthless, cracked sound. "I'm not very keen in moving on, Scott. I've never got over my boyfriend's death. It hurts as hell now and years ago. But allowing the hurt freezes you in a cold winter... it's a parody of death. Jean has died but you must go on living." Here. She had said it.

Further silence. He lay motionless and numb on the cold, sterile surface. If she didn't know otherwise, she could think he had fallen asleep. "That's partially the reason because you've become passively suicidal nowadays, right? You're trying moving on, but you really don't want. Besides, you need being punished. Because that you made up that Jean's copy. To get your self-loathing thrown back on your face."

He didn't answer. Her eyes narrowed in a glare. He was using her mother's -sorts of- memory to hurt himself and feel more miserable. Shouting him about that should wait, though.

"How long have you been like this? How many nights have you come down here, looking for one excuse for dying?" Rachel prodded with a hushed, ruthless whisper.

He looked away. "Every night for one week and a half." Ignoring her startled, baffled expression, he went on. "Of late I'm so strained, so nervous I can't sleep. And so furious I'm treading permanently on the edge. I use the Danger Room to punish me physically and mentally so I'm too worn-out to bark to someone. After I stop by the infirmary to patch myself. Nobody had caught me so far."

Rachel felt black horror seeping in her, brought for his flat, laconic words. Something was leeching his will to live. "But, why? Why?"

Scott didn't offer any reason but he shut painfully his eyes and exhaled air. As... liberating as that chat was, he couldn't really explain Rachel why he spent all his spare time by Jean's grave. Or talking about the dreams were haunting him. And driving him mad as a slow poison was too sweet to be rejected.

A soft body leaned on him smoothly, and he stiffened. However, when his eyelids opened with a mixture of wishful hope and paralyzing dread, he saw her daughter was hugging him. Fiercely.

"What are you-" She sealed his lips with a forefinger, silencing his words.

"I'm sorry, Scott." She sobbed. "You're falling apart in the seams and I've been as blind and clueless as the rest."

Neither of them said another word. They didn't need. Rachel forged a link and opened it, letting her feelings flowing down to him and sensing his own flaring, harmful emotions. For first time they were sharing the pain, the loss of Jean.

They stayed embraced on the Danger Room's floor for a long while, weeping quietly.

To be continued... 


End file.
